That is shit, I remember working at a place with that kind of attitude when I first moved to a city and it's awful. Australia even has comparatively better labour laws. For casual employees on weekends they get paid more, after a certain hour at night you can be paid more and some industries have tool and meal…

Oh yeah! I forget other countries don't have penalty rates. I worked casual in Australia for years and those time and a half/double time days are what makes it a somewhat sustainable wage. Whenever I tell people our minimum wage they want to move. It is a great country I just don't understand why it has to be so, so…

Ha! First I lived in Prahran then I moved to Yarraville. You're right about the coffee, it always astounded me how early coffee shops closed. Both suburbs I lived in had an IGA that'd stay open until about 8pm so I was lucky and I also managed to live near pizza shops owned by Lebanese people on both occasions and…

As someone who attempted 30 mins of a "body jam" class last week and resembled a baby giraffe (at times actually being birthed) I just gotta say... Wow.

The lunch thing is crazy! I said it up thread but when I lived in Australia I had 1 hour for lunch, I paid bills, went to the bank, sometimes had to buy a present or something for someone, usually take a work related call and I ate my lunch. Here, in France, my boyfriend and I have lunch together at a restaurant every…

It's funny, when I first heard from a French person last week that there was a perfume shop in Paris being forced to close on a Sunday I did picture a quaint little shop selling some perfume to tourists at 1am being shut down and felt bad for the owner. You're right, and my heart certainly doesn't bleed for big…

Yes! My friend has been a vegetarian since day one and she cannot walk past a sausage sizzle at Bunnings without insisting whoever is with her, as long as they are a meat eater, has a sausage because they smell so good.

That has been the attitude of every employer I have ever worked for. From KFC to a small beauty salon and even a plaintiff law firm I 100% believe every employer, bottom line, cares more about making money than they do about me (to a degree anyway). But that's a common criticism of capitalism. Minimum wage in France…

I lived in an inner Melbourne suburb but I feel ya... Having to make the decision about whether or not you will need to eat a family block of chocolate for the rest of the night by 8pm is stressful. Strangely, the outer suburbs had the 24 hour supermarkets and Kmarts.

Oh yes! A friend of mine does this all the time with his girlfriend. Like "thanks @girlfriend for an awesome b'day present" and then she responds. This is a 30 year old professional couple that otherwise are pretty down to earth and not at all showy - it baffles me!

Yep. This is my life too now. Last Sunday I thought shops are closed so I'd go to the pool, put the bathers on and... You guessed it, pool is closed.

It's a HUGE pass time on Sundays in my home town in my native country for young families to go to a home wares or building store with the kids to buy plants or house stuff and then spend Sunday afternoon building a project. Until I moved to France and had to adjust to no trading on Sundays I'd never noticed this…

I love you.

I live so close to my bank in France, I've never learnt the opening times but I walk past it often and it is closed over lunch and early on weekdays. My French boyfriend never bats an eyelid at the inconvenience but for me who came from a country where I would often use my lunch hour away from work to buy something,…

Yep. So many shops here in France are shut Mondays. In the city I am in most small businesses are shut for 1.5 to 2 hours over lunch time too. To me it's crazy.

Sort of related: can anyone tell me if France have some sort of embargo on online beauty shopping? I can't access strawberry net from France or get beauty products delivered to France that I want from amazon... I'm really curious.

I posted up thread but I'm an Australian living in France and no trading on Sundays is really frustrating. I don't think I'll ever get used to it either. Every Sunday I wake up and think "I'll go to the bakery and then.... Oh, nothing". It's not really that dramatic but it's a huge change for me because I'm usually…

It is SO inconvenient. I have moved from Australia to France and the no trading on Sundays thing is the most frustrating so far. I get into heated discussions with French people about it. Most of them that I have spoken to support trading on Sundays but my own French boyfriend maintains that Sunday is for relaxing and…

I used to say it to my 3 male, stoner housemates and it'd always get a chuckle. Bar was set pretty low for entertainment in that house though.

Oh my god! My friends called it "the birds" and sometimes "the birds are in flight" but I think it was only because our pads had wings. Kinda similar...